Labor and immigrants rights organizations across the gulf south and nationally are calling for reform or elimination of the H2B visas system as new reports of abuses of immigrant workers are surfacing and workers organize against a system which the Southern Poverty Law Center says is "close to slavery"
Last Friday at an oil rig maintenance facility in Pascagoula, Mississippi, an employer locked up six Indian workers on H2B visas in a small room for eleven hours. 200 Indian workers at the facility refused to work that day, resulting in the six workers being released. This weekend Mexican welders working in southwest Louisiana who are part of the Alliance of Guest Workers for Dignity visited with the Indian workers, as part of the ongoing organizing of immigrant workers against what one worker described as the "traficantes de suenos" or traffickers of dreams.
report by the SPLC
interviews
statement by Indian guest workers
